FL Dems back planned student walkout on Friday to protest education restrictions

Students from more than 300 high schools and colleges in Florida plan to participate in a mass walkout at noon Friday to protest bills restricting the LGBTQ+ community and education policies in Florida.

“This is not a single-day revolution and this is not a spontaneous attack,” said Zander Moricz, a 19-year-old student activist who is helping to coordinate what is being called the “Walkout 2 Learn” event.

Moricz kicked off a press conference announcing the event in the Fourth Floor Rotunda at the Capitol in Tallahassee Thursday. It took place a day after the Florida’s Board of Education expanded last year’s “Don’t Say Gay” law (officially called Parental Rights in Education) to prohibit discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity through the twelfth grade.

Last year’s bill banned such discussions from kindergarten through the third grade.

“We cannot keep ignoring young people,” Moricz said. “A year ago, hundreds of students told you that this would happen. We told you that and yesterday we were proven right.”

Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. played down the expansion of the law on Wednesday, telling the Associated Press,  “We’re not removing anything here. All we are doing is, we are setting the expectations so our teachers are clear that they are to teach to the standards.”

The Republican-dominated Florida House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to deny transgender people access to the bathrooms of their choice, ban gender-affirming care for minors, and penalize performance spaces that allow minors to attend drag shows.

It’s under that backdrop that Moricz said it’s important for the state’s youth to push back against the conservative education policies of Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.

“DeSantis does not control this state, and tomorrow begins a long journey of Florida students reclaiming their power, their schools, and Florida,” he said.

Moricz is a student at Harvard taking the semester off.  A year ago, he was class president at Pine View School in Sarasota County and the youngest plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by Equality Florida and a group of families against DeSantis in an effort to overturn the parental rights law. A federal judge dismissed the case last fall).

During the walkout, participating students will be asked to sign an “Active Pledge” to register to vote and hear a five-minute banned-history lesson from a fellow student, followed with participating in a virtual college-level African-American history course — “circumventing our governor’s ban, because he cannot decide on what we do and do not learn,” Moricz  said.

Censorship attempt

Moricz was joined by several Democratic state lawmakers who said they were inspired by the energy among the Florida youth who will walkout.

“The Florida GOP is attempting to censor and ban Black, queer, and trans history culture and identity in schools around the state and students have had enough,” said Palm Beach County state Sen. Lori Berman.

“Florida leaders are grossly overstepping their authority, silencing teachers and stripping students of accurate and quality instruction. Students are tired of discriminatory policies and bans and are standing up for their rights and we are right there with them,” Berman said.

“We support them taking back their power,” said Jacksonville Rep. Angie Nixon of the students. “They are demonstrating that they have the power to defend their identities, demand that we respect their pronouns, take back their education, and influence who can create laws in our state. I look forward to many of them being our next leaders, pushing out some of these disrespectful elected officials here in this House, helping us roll back these foolish, ridiculous laws.”

“Instead of focusing on issues that Floridians actually care about like high property insurance rates, skyrocketing rent, access to affordable health care, just to name a few, Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party instead are waging this culture war with our education system,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried. “DeSantis, you need to go back to governing and addressing the massive teacher shortage in our public education system, not dictating what educators and our universities, our public schools, should teach.”